Fred
Wertheimer, the former head of Common Cause has said “the call for an Article V constitutional convention ‘is by far the most
dangerous thing in the country today. If we ever got [to a convention], this
would create a constitutional crisis unlike anything we’ve seen in our
lifetimes[1].’”
Such intemperate language is not what I would expect from a scholar like Mr.
Wertheimer.Let’s examine his words
closely:

· “by far the most dangerous
thing in the country today” More dangerous than nuclear warfare? More
dangerous than global warming? And to the point, more dangerous than the
consequences of Citizens United v FEC?

· “If we ever got
[to a convention]” This glides over all the intermediate steps to get to a
convention. Mainly it ignores the FACT that every single time, without
exception, an Article V convention looked like it would get the needed two
thirds state legislatures to require Congress to call a convention, Congress
stepped in and wrote its own amendment.Congress did it because it doesn’t want to lose control of the
process.There is no earthly reason to
believe the same thing wouldn’t happen again. Why should it?

·“a constitutional crisis unlike anything we’ve
seen in our lifetimes.”Let’s look
at the line that leads to the Common Cause “constitutional crises.”

There
are three events that have to happen.If
any one of these three does not happen, there can be no crisis as defined by
Common Cause. The first event is that having achieved close to or all the two
third states required under Article V to require Congress to call a convention,
Congress fails to step in to control
the amendment process itself.This has never happened and there is no reason
to believe it ever would happen since Congress doesn’t want a runaway
convention either even when it approves of the amendment. Therefore I would
rate this event as very unlikely.

The
second thing that would have to happen to get Common Cause’s “constitutional
crises” is that once the convention is called, a putsch takes place and the convention is seized by a group
determined to use the convention for purposes other than the purpose for which
it was created. I don’t know where this idea comes from with no basis in history
or fact but I would rate it at least very unlikely. Therefore the probability
of both these two events happening is very, very unlikely.

The
third required event is that three quarters of the states would ratify the
results of this hypothetical “runaway convention.” Why on Earth would three
quarters of the states do that after two thirds of the states had called for
the convention which the runaway convention is running away from? Also very
unlikely, which means the probability of an amendment resulting from a runaway convention being ratified is very, very,
very unlikely.

Or
to put it in mathematical terms, if the probability of each one of those three
events was 10% then the probability of all three happening would be 0.1%. Or a
probability of 99.9% that it won’t happen. For this minuscule chance of a
“runaway convention” succeeding, Common Cause would discard the weapon that our
Founding Fathers gave us. Far more likely, if Common Cause has its way, is the
failure to defeat Citizens United.

Common
Cause says: “There is nothing in the
Constitution to prevent a constitutional convention from being expanded in
scope to issues not raised in convention calls passed by the state
legislatures, and therefore could lead to a runaway convention.” They also
say: “There are no rules governing
constitutional conventions.” And, reading Article V that may be true
although scholars disagree.

Common
Cause shows us how, it says, it could
happen: “There are no rules governing
constitutional conventions. A constitutional convention would be an
unpredictable Pandora’s Box; the last one, in 1787, resulted in a brand new
Constitution. It’s rather far-fetched, not to say unpatriotic, to suggest
that the 1787 convention was a model for some sort of runaway usurpation (by
George Washington?) If the Constitutional Convention
was a "runaway" convention, then what was it running away from?
Common Cause claims it was running away from the Confederation Congress under
the Articles of Confederation whose charter it had violated. Perhaps so, yet
the Confederation Congress itself had never made that claim and had instead tacitly
supported the proposed Constitution. This illustrates the difficulty
Common Cause has in its search for facts to support its doomsday conjectures

Common
Cause would have us fear some dreadful consequence could follow from an Article
V convention. After all, under the guise of an amendment, one could
theoretically amend the Constitution so as to essentially rewrite or repeal it.
Donald Trump could write an amendment to appoint himself president and dictator
for life. That could theoretically happen. And theoretically 38 or more states
could ratify it. But the same things could theoretically happen without an
Article V convention. Why is a runaway Article V convention any more likely
than a runaway Congress?

Let’s
bring some cool facts into all this heated speculation.

As
we know, to achieve Common Cause’s worst case scenario would require
ratification by three quarters of the states. This process has been used successfully
27 times to ratify 27 amendments. How many times has this process produced a
disastrous result?In my opinion only
once – the 18th amendment, prohibition.(And even this was no quick flim-flam but part of a movement which had been building for
a century and had already succeeded in 23 of the 48 states and many more
communities.)That’s hardly a track
record to justify Common Cause’s concern about the ratification of a runaway
convention.

There
have been over 700 state applications to Congress for an Article V convention
and none (zero, zip, nada) have resulted in an Article V convention.That fact alone should relieve Common Cause’s
anxiety.

The
first Congress in 1789 took over the job of amending the Constitution with a
Bill of Rights after two states voted for an Article V convention to add one. The
17th Amendment (1913) was proposed by Congress after the states
demanding an Article V convention came within two of the necessary votes of
three quarters of the state legislatures. Fully half the Constitutional
amendments were written wholly or at least partly in response to the threat of
an Article V convention. These are:

Amendments
1 to 10, the Bill of Rights.

17th
Amendment established the direct election of Senators by popular vote.
21st Amendment repealed prohibition.
22nd Amendment limited the number of times that a person can be elected
president.
25th Amendment addressed succession to the Presidency.

There’s
not a bad amendment or a runaway convention or even a convention among them. That’s
not bad record for 228 years of every conceivable crisis.

So, if Wolf-PAC and its allies like Get Money Out-Maryland are successful
and get say 20 or 30 states calling for an Article V convention to overthrow
the Citizens United decision (they
already have five), historical precedent shows that Congress would take over
the process, as it has always done before, and write its own proposed amendment
in fear of a runaway convention out of Congress’s control. Even if Congress
hates the amendment, as they did with the 17th,they will
still take over the process when the convention is inevitable in order to
prevent a runaway convention.

That’s what would
happen if Common Cause would stop sabotaging the efforts of thousands of unpaid
volunteer activists slogging away through the halls and offices of state
legislatures to convince the states to call for an Article V convention to
overthrow Citizens United.

Yes,
volunteers, not the “special interests and the wealthiest”Common Cause cites as the advocates of an Article V
convention. (Common Cause also cites
that its own supporters include the John Birch
Society, the National Rifle Association, and the Koch brothers.)If Common Cause succeeds in sabotaging the
efforts of these volunteers it would remove its only weapon to force Congress to amend the
Constitution to overthrow Citizens
United.Common Cause then would be
left to rely only on its ability to jawbone a Congress, flooded with money, to
give up its money. Good luck with that.

The
Founding Fathers gave us the weapon to stop this from happening and Common
Cause would have us throw it away.